Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Umbrella by Will SelfAge of Assassins by RJ BarkerThe Grip of It by Jac JemcThe Lesser Bohemians by Eimear McBrideThe Three Sisters by May SinclairThe Bell Jar by Sylvia PlathI Will Not Serve by Evelyn Mahyère

Let's start with the not-so good: The Grip of It should have been great. A literary haunted house novel is a premise right up my alley. The major issue, without a doubt, is how over-written it is. The stink of writer workshop wafts up from every sentence: the affected terseness of the male narrator and the pretentious lengthy verbosity of the female narrator both feel so calculated and workshopped as to be evacuated of any of the immediacy or possibility afforded by the genre. One aspect to horror's success is the potentiality: anything could happen. But the prose in The Grip of It holds everything back, asking the reader to focus more on the poesy than the slow creeping dread of the premise. Like Atwood's science fiction novels, this book feels like it was written by somebody who has never read any other horror. I get that sense from the archaic premise (haunted house? in this economy? who can afford a house, haunted or otherwise?) and from the antiquated unfolding of the plot (childhood trauma, town secrets, etc). Throwback novels aren't the problem, but if you're going to do Shirley Jackson, you better bring something other than tired aesthetics.

I haven't felt much like writing recently, but I'll say that Umbrella and The Bell Jar were incredible and will easily crack my top ten best of the year.

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This is a blog by me that's pretty much for me as I have no readers. I try and write things and think critically about stuff. I am totally embarrassed by the quality of writing and thinking from 2013 and earlier.